How patriotism is
trying to silence voices of dissent.
The City Paper of
Philadelphia
October 4 - 11, 2001
by Daryl Gale, Frank
Lewis and Gwen Shaffer
This is not the time.
Over and over we’ve been hearing this
phrase in recent weeks. It’s not the
time for Democrats in Congress to
question President Bush. Not the time to
make jokes, however dark, however grimly
fitting. Not the time for any of
us to appear doubtful about the course
that our president has set us on
since that recent, long-ago day when a
handful of men armed with box
cutters and motivations we’ll never
understand executed a plan almost
sublime in its brutality and changed the
world.
Not the time. Some use exactly those
words. Like when Bush’s spokesman,
Ari Fleischer, reacted to comments from
comedian Bill Maher about
America’s cowardice in "lobbing
cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away," by
saying: "It’s a terrible thing to
say and it’s unfortunate. There are
reminders to all Americans that they
need to watch what they say, watch
what they do, and this is not the time
for remarks like that; there never
is." With two sentences, Fleischer
seemed to extend President Bush’s
challenge to the nations of the world ,
"Either you are with us or you are
with the terrorists" , to Americans
as well. And as of press time, his
only attempt to modify his statement had
been to claim he was speaking
only of Maher and a particular member of
Congress.
Others, however, don’t bother to present
their contempt for others’ views
as admonishments, but rather skip right
ahead to the threats. Often, these
are threats of violence, sometimes veiled, sometimes not.
Predictions of the death of irony were
premature, it seems; chief among
the freedoms for which our enemies
supposedly hate us is our freedom to
express ourselves, in art, in music, in
politics, but most or all, in the
written and spoken word. And it is in
the name of protecting these
freedoms that many among us would like
others to shut up. They seem
shockingly oblivious to the fact that
censorship is supposed to be
anathema to us. As writer Oliver Wendell
Holmes Sr. put it in 1860: "The
very aim and end of our institutions is
just this: that we may think what
we like and say what we think."
But now is not the time.
And sadly, not all of them are partisan
political operatives or the
armchair philosophers who have made talk
radio so successful. Some of them
work within or have some influence over
the news and entertainment media,
meaning they play a role in what the
rest of us read, see and hear. And in
their patriotic zeal, or their fear of
those gripped by the patriotic zeal,
they are censoring themselves. Even
Saturday Night Live has gone all
gushy, promising to avoid humor that, as
producer Lorne Michaels put it,
"is in any way disrespectful"
to Bush, who before Sept. 11 was routinely
portrayed on SNL as a squinting,
adolescent buffoon. Presidenting just got
a whole lot easier, because now is not
the time.
But we’re in this for the long haul, right? So if not now, when?
In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, there has been a growing
intolerance for expressions of dissent
over the latest additions to
American dogma: that terrorists
associated with Saudi exile Osama bin
Laden were responsible for the attacks;
that said attacks were utterly
unprovoked; and that the best way , the
only way , to respond is to visit
grievous bodily harm upon these people,
regardless of the cost in dollars
and innocent lives.
If this were an election, we could
report that the votes are tallied, the
final precincts have reported and the
results are in: Free speech lost.
California Congresswoman Barbara Lee was
the lone "nay" vote on Sept. 14
when Congress authorized the use of
military force in response to the
terrorist attacks. For voting her
pacifist conscience, Lee has been
vilified and excoriated in the court of
public opinion. Lee’s press
secretary, Andrew Sousa, says that his
boss has received 45,000 e-mails
and faxes, most of them negative.
"In the first days following the
vote, the calls and e-mails were very
angry and passionate," Sousa says,
"and yes, there were threats and
horrible, horrible things said. I should
also say that now there are more
calls and e-mails coming in from people
who may disagree but respect
Congresswoman Lee’s vote as one of conscience.
But more people are urging
restraint now than there were two weeks
ago."
In defending her vote against the use of
force, Lee writes, "I could not
support such a grant of war-making
authority to the president; I believe
it would put more innocent lives at
risk. I do not dispute the president’s
intent to rid the world of terrorism but
measures that spawn further
acts of terror or that do not address
the sources of hatred do not
increase our security."
Sousa, for his part, sees more danger in
the tone of the correspondence
his office has received than in his boss
setting herself up as the sole
voice of dissent.
"Dissent, debate and discourse are
the basis of our democracy, and it’s
ironic that while Americans rally ‘round
the flag to protect our way of
life, we also happily trample on the
tenets that way of life was based
on," Sousa says. "Nothing is
more fundamental to our democracy than the
First Amendment, and that means
listening and giving due respect to
opinions that may be unpopular at the
moment."
Tell that to Les Daughtry Jr. The editor
and publisher of the Texas City
Sun, Daughtry commadeered a portion of
his paper’s front page on Sept. 23
to apologize for a column, penned by
city editor Tom Gutting and published
the previous day, that sharply
criticized Bush for taking so long to
return to Washington on Sept. 11.
And in a rebuttal titled "Bush’s
leadership has been superb," Daughtry
called his city editor’s words
"offensive," "outrageous" and "so absurd
that they don’t even merit a
response." He ended the fawning rebuttal with
"May God bless President George W.
Bush and other leaders, and God bless
America."
Reached at his office for comment,
Daughtry admits that the paper was
inundated with negative phone calls,
faxes and e-mails Saturday after
Gutting’s piece ran, but says he was
moved to write a rebuttal because he
was personally offended by the column.
He won’t explain why Gutting was
fired.
"I’m not going to comment on the
matter past what I said in my rebuttal
and apology," Daughtry says. "I’m
a supporter of the First Amendment, and
I think reporters and editors have the
obligation to be voices of dissent
at times, but this was beyond the
pale."
Daughtry refused to say whether the
paper’s advertisers threatened to pull
out, and even refused to link Gutting’s
column with his being fired. He
did admit that the Sun hasn’t hired a
new city editor yet, but plans to do
so soon. He wouldn’t speculate on
whether the new editor would be
restricted in what he writes for the
paper.
In Grants Pass, Ore., the Daily Courier
fired columnist and copy editor
Dan Guthrie for writing that after the
attacks, Bush "skedaddled" and
that, against the courage of the
passengers who allegedly thwarted the
fourth hijacking by ditching the plane
in western Pennsylvania, "the
picture of Bush hiding in a Nebraska
hole becomes an embarrassment."
The Daily Courier ran an apology to its
readers the next day and handed
Guthrie his walking papers.
Philadelphia Daily News editor Zack
Stalberg was alarmed when he heard
that journalists were being fired for
being critical of the president, and
he vowed that no such action would ever
be taken against a writer at his
paper.
"I’m just appalled that people are
being fired for being the voices of
dissent," Stalberg says. "But
there really is a newfound sensitivity out
there for George Bush in the wake of the
attacks, and a tendency to see
any criticism as a personal attack on the symbol of our
country."
Stalberg says that the recent Daily News
editorial demanding "Blood for
Blood" was almost unanimously
embraced by readers, while at the same time
he’s heard flak from readers for even
the mildest of criticisms of the
administration.
"It’s as though in times of crisis
the president can do no wrong, which is
bullshit. Public figures need to be
called on the carpet when they’re
wrong, and it’s our job to be the thorn
in the side of politicians and
point out the flaws in the political
process."
David Rolland was carrying on this
tradition when he wrote an editorial
titled "The politics of fear and
anger" for the alternative newsweekly he
edits, the Ventura County [Calif.]
Reporter. Rolland accused Bush of
manipulating the nation’s fear and
suggested that the president had
"dangerously oversimplified a very
complicated situation" by casting the
U.S. as the good guy in a war on
"evil."
The first reader to call sounded
friendly at first, but then claimed to
have lost two people close to him in the
attacks. "Then he said ‘Watch
your back walking to and from
work,’" Rolland says. Another employee took
the call, so it wasn’t clear whether the
threat was intended for Rolland
or for everyone at the Reporter.
Another caller asked if Rolland were
still alive. Informed that he was,
the caller said, "He shouldn’t
be."
"It kind of left me a little weak
in the knees," Rolland admits. His first
concern, he says, was for the other
employees. Later, his girlfriend
pointed out that he, too, could be in
danger.
"It even made me second-guess what I
had said , a little bit,
momentarily," he adds. But after
re-reading the editorial, he decided it
was valid, and he was glad he’d written
it.
"The publisher asked if this was a
battle I really wanted to fight,"
Rolland says (Ventura County is "a
fairly conservative place," he notes).
"I said, ‘This is definitely a
battle I want to fight.’"
The complaints and vague threats of
violence, he says, came from a few
people "who are angry. Very
patriotic and very angry."
On Sept. 24, the guests on CN8’s news
show It’s Your Call With Lynn Doyle
included Congressman Jim Greenwood, a
Republican from Bucks County, and
Burton Caine, a law professor from
Temple University.
Greenwood and Caine mixed it up over the
nagging question of civil rights
versus national security. Caine raised
the issue of declaring war; the
Constitution gives this power to
Congress, not the president. Greenwood,
however, said Caine was missing the
point.
"Yes, there are some academics out
there who would like to question that,"
Greenwood said, "but with all due
respect, sir, you’re a tad out of step
with where this country wants to
go."
In other words, get with the program.
To his credit, Greenwood repeatedly made
the point that civil libertarians
should be part of the dialogue over
protecting rights while increasing
safety. But just as frequently, he
suggested that if Caine and his ilk had
nothing constructive to offer, they
should keep quiet. "This is not a time
for [a cynical] approach," he said.
Later, in an interview, Caine says he is
not surprised. "People who assert
civil liberties are now considered
disloyal," he says. After his
appearance on CN8, he received several
hostile phone calls: "Why don’t you
care about the civil rights of the
people who got killed?" "Why don’t you
get out of your office and see the real
world?" And so on.
In his First Amendment classes, students
are willing, even eager, to limit
rights. Each semester he asks them to
cite what they consider to be
reasonable exceptions to protected
speech. One year, they came up with 32.
Even today, his students , future
lawyers , are no more concerned with
losing rights than the rest of the
population.
Now is not the time.
But now is the time when voicing and
listening to dissent is most crucial.
Unity does not mean looking together in
the same direction; it means
looking together in all directions,
because none of us, from the president
on down, knows for sure where we’re
headed, or from whence the next threat
will come.
